Until yesterday, I didn’t know that Sanaa’ was the capital of Yemen. Truth be told, I didn’t actually know where Yemen was (it’s next to Saudi Arabia, across the Red Sea from Eritrea). But I’ve been reading a lot about Sanaa’ this week, and while I’ve been intrigued with tales of fresh mango juice, I’ve been most interested in the punctuation issues involved. The name of the capital of Yemen, in Arabic, looks like this:
There are many approaches to the Romanization of Arabic.
Looking at each of the letters in the Arabic word using the BATR Character Mappings, for example, you get (from right to left): SnEaa.
The name of the capital ends up in English in a variety of ways; I prefer Sanaa’ simply for its typographic symmetry.
| Yemen Government | Sanaa |
| Embassy of the Republic of Yemen in Canada | Sanaa’ |
| Embassy of the Republic of Yemen in London | Sanaa |
| United Nations | Sanaa’ |
| Department of Foreign Affairs and International (Canada) | Sanaa (Sanaa’) |
| Embassy of the United States in Yemen | Sanaa |
| Associated Press | Sana |
| Associated Press | Sana |
| BBC | Sanaa |
| Google Translate | Sanaa |
| Infoplease | Sanaá |
| Lonely Planet | Sanaa |
| The Guardian (UK) | Sanaa |
| The Telegraph (UK) | Sanaa |
| The Times (UK) | Sanaa |
| U.S. Board on Geographic Names | Sanaa |
| Wikipedia | Sanā’ |
| Wiktionary | Sanaa |
| The World Factbook (U.S. CIA) | Sanaa |
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I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
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Comments
You would have known this if
You would have known this if you did the New York Times crossword puzzle.
How does the New York Times
How does the New York Times crossword puzzle handle the punctuation?
It doesn’t.The answer would
It doesn’t.
The answer would just be sanaa. OR SANAA, if you do the crossword in caps.
I’d recommend you to the book
I’d recommend you to the book “Motoring with Mohammed,” if I were sure how the title renders “Mohammed.” Anyway, takes place in Yemen, by Eric Hansen.
Actually, according to the
Actually, according to the Bikdash Arabic Transliteration Rules, the name of the city should be SanEaae.
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